Invitation to Explore The Arms Race Within - A Meditation

James W. Douglass, 1980 & 1985

This is Chapter 5 of Lightning East To West - Jesus, Gandhi, and the Nuclear Age (also included as PDF) paired with the documentary, The Arms Race Within, published in 1980 and 1985 respectively.

As Jim Douglass has observed, Hitler won World War II. This is unspeakably evident in such global manifestations of holocaust machines as Trident submarines. The book’s Preface begins:

When work began on this book ten years ago, I understood its writing as a form of prayer. Jesus and Gandhi discovered a nonviolent process that offers inconceivable possibilities of change in our nuclear age. We need not despair. Hope is grounded in our very being, in a loving, truthful process bound up with it.
“[T]he purpose of the Trident campaign is not to stop the Trident submarine and missile system. Its purpose is to change ourselves—all of us—so that there will no longer be anyone to run the submarine or fire the missile. At that point Trident will be stopped, but not as a primary goal and not by any opposing force. Trident will be stopped because the spirit in which we all live will have changed to the point of reducing Trident to what it is in truth: An inert holocaust machine which conscientious people will no more choose to operate than they would an Auschwitz oven. When we become different in truth and in the Spirit, there will simply be no one to run Trident.”

video, (57:40)
Trident Meditation
Jim and Shelley Douglass

I don’t understand.

What is it you don’t understand?

This submarine which equals 7,296 Hiroshimas. How can anyone understand that?

Begin with a meditation: To understand Trident say the word “Hiroshima.” Reflect on its meaning for one second. Say and understand “Hiroshima” again. And again. And again. 7,296 times. Assuming you’re able to understand Hiroshima in one second, you’ll need more than two hours to understand Trident. That’s one Trident submarine. To understand the destructive power of the whole Trident fleet, it would take you more than 40 hours, devoting one second to each Hiroshima.

Your meditation is impossible. To understand Hiroshima alone would take a lifetime.

You do understand. Hiroshima was the end of our ability to imagine our destructive power, or to measure its consequences. Trident is the end of the world.

How does one live at the end of the world?

By beginning a new one. The power of thousands of Hiroshimas on their way to Trident submarines comes from the grip of an illusion: our own egos and the murderous security they seek. The force of truth and love, lived in their depths, is a force of unity, of life itself. That force is real. We need to join in a community committed to that nonviolent love force which is the power of the powerless. We need to test the truth of love by betting our lives on it in the world. If a community can experiment deeply enough in a nonviolent love force the White Train of Trident will be stopped. Love will stop the train. Love will stop Trident.

 

If The Wars Go On

by Edward J. Curtin, Jr., 30 May 2024, edwardcurtin.com

 

I suppose my title could have been couched in the singular form, as Hermann Hesse, the Nobel Prize winning German/Swiss author, did with his collection of anti-war essays about World War I (the war to end all wars that didn’t), If The War Goes On . . .

Or more appropriately, I might have eliminated that conditional “If” since it seems Pollyannish.

It’s a long hard road, this anti-war business. During the first Cold War and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the early sixties when Kennedy and Krushchev narrowly avoided blowing the world to smithereens, Bob Dylan put it right in his fierce song, Masters of War:

(Verse 1)

Come, you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

(Verse 3)

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

Indeed there is a system of war that guarantees that the various wars go on and on ad infinitum, and they are linked. It is why the warfare state has killed our anti-war leaders, first and foremost JFK for turning against war in the last year of his presidency. Then in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in quick succession. It is why if you dare to look around the world today, you will see that there is a series of wars happening, not only in the obvious places like Ukraine and Gaza, but in places that you may never have heard of, and if you peek a bit further into their causes, you will discover that a familiar culprit with 750 plus military bases around the world has its hand in most of them – the United States of America.

These wars have their cold and hot phases. There are days when the corporate media let them sleep and other times when the same media wake them a bit, but never enough to wake their readers up to the reality of the deadly game. That is the media’s job as stenographers for the warfare state. Wars being essentially the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne wrote long ago, they provide vast profits for the military-industrial complex/Wall St., whether they are in preparation or in operation, awake or asleep, hot or cold. Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst with a moral conscience, has aptly named this vast interlocking propaganda apparatus the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank complex, MICIMATT. It is a complex that blatantly serves the interests of the masters of war who “ain’t worth the blood/that runs in [their] your veins,” in Dylan’s words.

The preparation for war is war. What is prepared must be used up, so other weapons can be prepared to be used up, so other weapons can be prepared to be used up, and on and on until one day no one is left to use anything, for the world will be used up in a nuclear conflagration. These weapons are produced in nice clean factories that pay good wages to people who take their pay and go their way, giving their souls to the killers. For the U.S. economy is built on the waging of wars so continuous that it is nearly impossible to find a break between its hot and cold phases, or what seems like decent employment and the diabolic. They are so intertwined. It is a system of capitalistic finance, a revolutionary system that builds to destroy.

The U.S spends nearly $900 billion dollars annually on “defense” spending; this is more than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan combined. The U.S.A. is a warfare state; it’s as simple as that. And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their insouciance and silence. That their country is spending up to 2 trillion dollars on modernizing its nuclear weapons disturbs them not. It is a death cult. Some – as I myself have done mistakenly – talk about the “deep state” or some other deceptive phrase that conceals the truth that the official state is the “deep state.” It stares us in the face, but many refuse to stare it back down. It is too obvious, standing, as it does, in the way of a life of illusions.

And what is equally apparent today – or should be if one is not asleep – is that because of the war policies of the U.S., the chances of another world war and the use of nuclear weapons is rising by the day. Despite all its denials to the contrary, the US/NATO is pushing for open warfare with Russia that will involve the use of nuclear weapons.

Our masters of war are pushing us toward a nuclear abyss.

In a recent perceptive article, “Russia and China Have Had Enough,” Pepe Escobar writes truths many prefer not to hear. That there is no split between Russia and China but the opposite – a rock solid Russia-China strategic partnership and a determination to oppose and defeat the U.S./UK/NATO hybrid war tactics across Eurasia and the Middle East. That the more these U.S.-led forces attempt to destroy Russia, the more the expanding alliances involved in the Shanghai Cooperative Agreement (SCO) and the expanding BRICS partnerships of emerging economies (originally just Brazil, Russia, India, and then South Africa; now also Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, with many more countries waiting to join) will gain in power. In Escobar’s words, “. . . the Global Majority is on the move: Russia is closely cooperating, increasingly, with scores of nations in West Asia, wider Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

Despite this fact, the United States and its allies blithely continue as if their control of the world order is secure. That they can butcher and badger the world into submission. The insane are usually deluded, but when they control nuclear weapons, the people of the world need to awaken.

Ray McGovern, a Russia expert, (see raymcgovern.com) has echoed Escobar on the absurdity of the Russian China split; has emphasized how Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians has made it an isolated but desperate pariah state; and how the U.S. war against Russia in Ukraine is leading to the increased use of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons that could lead to full-scale nuclear war. He is not alone in this warning.

There are many signs that we are moving toward a nuclear war with calls for U.S./NATO to support more strikes inside Russia, crossing a very dangerous Russian red line. Russia has made it very clear they will respond. As politicians of various stripes – French President Macron, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, et al. have ecstatically been urging the Biden administration, who needs no urging, to escalate the war in Ukraine by attacking Russia proper (“The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told The Economist), Mike Whitney has written about a recent such attack that should send chills down everyone’s spines: “Washington Attacks Key Elements of Russia’s Nuclear Umbrella Threatening Entire Global Security Architecture.”. But since the corporate media ignore it, most will dream away and get their barbecues ready for Fourth of July celebrations. They and the flag-dressed Dolly Parton can sing all they want about when Johnny comes marching home again, but Dolly and no one will be jolly if there are no homes to march to, no Johnnies marching anywhere but to death, no anything. Just a wasteland.

Michel Chossudovsky, Ray McGovern, Eva Bartlett, Craig Murray, Patrick Lawrence, Vanessa Beeley, Pepe Escobar, Oliver Stone, Andrew Napolitano, Craig Paul Roberts, Chris Hedges, Alastair Crooke, Caitlin Johnstone, Peter Koenig, Finian Cunningham, Diana Johnstone, Lew Rockwell, and so many other sane but marginalized writers whose names I am omitting as I write quickly, are warning us of our closeness to nuclear annihilation. Cassandras all, I fear. Marginalized prophets such as writer and antinuclear activist James W. Douglass (Lightning East to WestJFK and the Unspeakable, etc.) have been issuing such warnings for decades. It is understandable that so many turn away from such warnings, for the thought of a nuclear war induces deep anxiety hard to control. But unless the vast majority can break through such reticence and see through the official propaganda, the world will be destroyed by madmen sooner or later. The signs today all point to sooner, for we are on the edge of the abyss.

Former British diplomat Alistair Crooke, in a recent article – The brink of dissolution: Neurosis in the West as the levee breaks – writes about how the Biden administration’s policy toward Russia-China, not to say Israel-Palestine, being nothing more than more of the same, is stupid, self-defeating, and very dangerous. Rather than accepting that its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is a disaster, the U.S. is escalating the conflict to a terrifying level. Rather than accepting the obvious deep alliance between China and Russian exemplified in the recent hug between Putin and Xi and their 8,000 word joint statement, Biden has said, “Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China.”

It doesn’t get any stupider. But when more of the same doesn’t work and you can’t accept the reality of a changing world order, you do more of the same. Crooke, writes:

The paradox is that Team Biden – wholly inadvertently – is midwifing the birth of a ‘new world’. It is doing so by dint of its crude opposition to parturition. The more the western élites push against the birthing – through ‘saving Zionism’; ‘saving European Ukraine’ and by crushing dissent – perversely they accelerate the foundering of Leviathan.

President Xi’s double farewell hug for President Putin following their 16-17 May summit nonetheless sealed the birth – even the New York Times, with customary self-absorption, termed the warm embrace by Xi as ‘defiance of the West’.

The root of the coming dissolution stems precisely from the shortcoming that the NY Times headline encapsulates in its disdainful labelling of the seismic shift as base anti-westernism.

More of the same, yes, that is Biden’s approach, inflamed regularly by the anti-Russian hatred spewed by The New York Times and its ilk. It is an obsession bordering on full-fledged madness, yet it is integral to the belief that the U.S. is an empire and will remain one while the rest of the world can go to hell. Such a mindset is behind the U.S.’s abrogating all the nuclear weapons treaties that provided a semblance of security that nuclear weapons would not be used.

Crooke ends his piece with these sobering words:

Put plainly, with the U.S. unable to exit or to moderate its determination to preserve its hegemony, Lavrov [Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister] sees the prospect for increased western weapons provision for Ukraine. The discourse of military escalation is in fashion in Europe (of that there is no doubt); but both in the Middle East and Ukraine, western policy is in deep trouble. There must be doubts whether the West has either the political will, or the internal unity, to pursue this aggressive course. Dragging wars are not traditionally thought to be ‘voter friendly’ when campaigning reaches its peak.

Let me repeat that last understated sentence: “Dragging wars are not traditionally thought to be ‘voter friendly’ when campaigning reaches its peak.” And so? More of the same?

Ray McGovern suggest what is more likely:

Israel [is] becoming a dangerous pariah; Ukraine/US/NATO a dangerous loser. As Israel defies the UN, and as the “exceptional” geniuses around Biden ignore Kremlin warnings regarding provocations re Ukraine, the likelihood increases for US use of tactical nukes.

Desperadoes do desperate things. In Biden and Netanyahu we have two blood-thirsty nihilists at the end of their ropes. These masters of war make me think that a better title for this piece would have been:

If the World Goes On.


The JFK Assassination Chokeholds That Inescapably Prove There Was A Conspiracy

Review by Edward J. Curtin, Jr., 10 May 2024, edwardcurtin.com

During my many years of teaching at different universities, nearly all my colleagues insisted that Lee Harvey Oswald alone assassinated President Kennedy, even while the general public questioned such a conclusion.  This disparity between gown and town always amused and informed me that something in the “higher education” world was low indeed.  Despite the fact that we agreed on many political matters, my academic colleagues laughed at all my writing and courses that10 May 2024 presented overwhelming evidence that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, led by the Central Intelligence Agency.  They reveled in their certitude, good humored as it was, but refused to research the matter.  They were smug.

Here is an excellent book that, if they would read it with open minds, would, as its subtitle says – inescapably prove that there was a conspiracy – and if Jack Ruby had not killed Oswald and he had been given a fair trial, Oswald would have been acquitted.  Written by James DiEugenio, Paul Bleau, Matt Crumpton, Andrew Iler, and Mark Adamczyk, The JFK Assassination Chokeholds lives up to its claim and then some.

For most readers of the general public, the amount of information it contains that proves the official version of the assassination is clearly false may be overwhelming, but for anyone with any scholarly pretensions or who has a particular interest in the JFK assassination, this book is essential.  It will last a long time as a key historical document.  For the general reader, one or two chapters should suffice to convince them that the authors have emphatically proven their points.  And to grasp these points and fully realize that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by elements of his own government led by the CIA and that the mass media were accessories after the fact to this terrible crime – to let this really sink in – well, nothing is more important in understanding what is going on today.

The five authors, two prominent JFK researchers (most notably Jim DiEugenio) and three attorneys, combine forces to create a volume backed by 700 references that provides ten different arguments, or chokeholds, that prove “1. There was a conspiracy in the murder of JFK, and 2. That the chokehold issues provide more than a reasonable doubt that would have made it impossible to convict Lee Harvey Oswald in a criminal trial.”

By chokeholds they mean a body of evidence that leads to an indisputable conclusion since their lists of evidence are so powerful.  Additionally, they further their arguments through the concept of consilience: “That even if one element cannot prove a fact on its own, the concordance of evidence from unrelated sources converges on a conclusion.”

From beginning to end, through each of the ten chapters in between, they build and build and build their case so powerfully, not through conjecture but with solid confirmed evidence, that by the time one is finished reading, it is impossible to not realize that the assassination of the president was a government hit job and that Oswald was exactly what he said – “a patsy.”  If like me, you need no convincing and believe that engaging in pseudo-debates about the assassination only plays into the hands of the killers – as if to say we don’t yet know the truth – you still should read this excellent book with admiration for the authors’ thoroughness and unique method of argumentation.

The evidence presented throughout has been accumulated for 60 years, not just by official government investigations but by independent researchers, accelerated greatly due to Oliver Stone’s brilliant 1991 film, JFK, that forced the U.S. government to pass the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and then in 1994 the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) that resulted in the declassification of tens of thousands of documents.

If a reader just read Chapter 7, “The Evidentiary Mess of the Twentieth Century,” by James DiEugenio, a chapter of just 16 pages but supported by 47 footnotes about the medical evidence and the official autopsy, one would immediately realize that only government officials were capable of patching up the back of Kennedy’s head wound to make it appear intact and forging photos to conceal the massive cavity caused by a bullet from the front.  That conspiracy about the larger conspiracy is all a reasonable person needs to know to prove the assassination was a government operation from beginning to end, and that Oswald did not kill John Kennedy.

But the book contains chapter after chapter like that one.

Chapter 1  – “ The Official Record Impeaches the Warren Commission” – by JFK researcher Paul Bleau opens the book with a thorough review of all the official investigations that demolishes any remaining pretense that even government officials believe the Warren Commission’s fictions.  He writes after reviewing them:

The overwhelming consensus that there were serious flaws with the Warren Commission conclusions and that there was a likely conspiracy does not come from independent authors who are trying to sell books. It comes from written reports of subsequent investigations and the statements of a very significant cross-section of over 90 insiders that participated in the investigations including the Warren Commission: Senators (some Republican, some Democrats), legal counsel, staff members, attorneys, researchers, medical personnel, autopsy physicians, historians, archivists, investigators, jury members, FBI, DPD and Louisiana State law enforcement agents. These include some of the highest-ranking members of the Warren Commission, Church and HSCA committees and the ARRB.

Bleau follows this up in Chapter 2, “Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: He Was No Lone Nut,” with a wealth of details showing that Oswald, a Marine trained in the Russian language and U2 spy plane technology, was a false defector to the Soviet Union as part of a CIA program; that his last attempted call from the Dallas jail was to a former Special Agent in U.S. Army Counterintelligence; that he had contacts with 64 plausible or definite intelligence assets such as David Ferrie, Guy Bannister, George de Mohrenschildt, David Atlee Philips, et al.  The evidence presented completely debunks the lone nut propaganda proffered by the Warren Commission and all its media accomplices such as The New York Times, CBS, Life magazine, etc.

In addition to the work of JFK researchers DiEugenio and Bleau, the attorney authors – Crumpton, Ller, and Adamczyk – contribute in ways that focus on legal arguments that would clearly lead to an acquittal for Oswald if he ever had been given a real trial.  They make clear that Oswald had to be killed by Jack Ruby who was “on a mission” for the government conspirators to prevent that from happening.  It is, as far as I know, the only book that offers that ingenious legal angle on the assassination.

Matt Crumpton writes about all the times Oswald was impersonated when he was elsewhere, for which there is vast evidence, and which would never have happened if he were a lone crazy assassin.  Crumpton’s tale about Ralph Yates and his testimony about the impersonator of Oswald with the “curtain rods” and his treatment by the FBI which led to his abuse with 40 shock treatments will make your blood boil.  Crumpton writes:

Ralph Yates is where the analysis of the case really starts to diverge between the conspiracy researchers and lone gunman researchers. For people who are suspicious of Oswald acting alone, the Yates story is a showstopper. The Feds committed this man to a mental institution without due process all because he told what was an inconvenient truth.

It is elementary, My Dear Watson, that if Oswald was being impersonated many times and there were double Oswalds, even “seven separate claims” when the real Oswald was in the Soviet Union, then there was a sophisticated conspiracy run by others using Oswald.  Crumpton writes:

There is no plausible reason why a lone gunman would be impersonated so many times. The frequency of these instances clearly increased in the days, weeks and months before the assassination, and also on the day of the assassination, which clearly shows a designed plot to lay the blame on Oswald within hours of the assassination.

The JFK Assassination Chokeholds covers other key matters: why Oswald could not have been on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository when the shots were fired, how the single bullet claim is absurd, the official lies about Jack Ruby and why he killed Oswald, the prior plots to kill JFK, the overwhelming evidence for a frontal shot, Presidents Trump and Biden’s continuing refusal to abide by the JFK Records Act and release all the files, and the media’s ongoing complicity in the coverup, etc.

It is so comprehensive and thoroughly convincing in its evidence and logic that anyone reading it – unless they were dishonest and in bad faith – would have to admit that these chokeholds should silence once and for all anyone claiming that Oswald was a lone nut who assassinated President Kennedy.

Ironically, the evidence and argument of this excellent volume actually refute its concluding sentence:

This is why this case cries out for a new investigation.

While the book is terrific, I must say I do not agree that we need a new investigation.  The facts have long been clear: President Kennedy was assassinated by the U.S. National Security State led by the CIA.  What we need to do is draw the implications from that fact.  They are profound.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


The Unspeakable, The Unthinkable, and The Imperative to Increase Consciousness

The Unspeakable, The Unthinkable,
and The Imperative to Increase Consciousness
David T. Ratcliffe, rat haus reality press, New Moon: 7 May 2024
https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/UnspeakUnthinkIncConsciousness.html

This is a personal reflection guided by a steadfast curiosity to understand how the world we all belong to by right of birth actually operates. I write it in concert with illuminated souls I have had the privilege to work with and learn from.

Always remember: we are divine beings having a physical experience. Dogma has been used to take away the idea of our own divinity and put it in the hands of someone else. Tyranny started with that idea of laying dogma on people and pulling everyone away from their own relationship to spirit. There is no greater purpose than to choose for ourselves the lens we adopt to view the world and our place in it. Doing so opens us up to seeing more of the infinite mystery life contains and expresses through all our relations.

Recognizing the intelligence we have been given by our Creator and using it as clearly and coherently as we possibly can is the antidote to the entire techno-logic perceptional reality that is based upon death. The eventual, inevitable outcome of such reality is oblivion and annihilation. It is our responsibility as human beings to see and acknowledge this and then act upon this understanding.

 

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Intentional killing. Legal frameworks for State-sponsored biochemical warfare.

LET THE SCIENCE SPEAK Conference
Presenter: Katherine Watt, American Catholic writer and paralegal
Reykjavik, Iceland – Oct. 4, 2023
Bailiwick News

This is a hyperlink-referenced version of Katherine Watt’s presentation leveraging her slide set from the Let The Science Speak Conference, held in Reykjavik, Iceland on 4 October 2023.

READ COMPLETE TEXT

 

EXCERPTS:

Treaties: WHO International Health Reg (2005) 

Core findings  

  • Public health emergencies are pretexts for power consolidation and legalized mass murder using State-sponsored biochemical warfare and weapons camouflaged as ‘vaccines,’ ‘countermeasures.’

Conclusion

  • Observed, recorded global injuries and deaths of human beings are result of INTENTIONAL ACTS OF WAR camouflaged as public health programs and medical countermeasures: ‘vaccines’ and many others.
    Deepen the backlash against public health. A rebuttal/reworking of an editorial by Lawrence O. Gostin and Sarah Wetter, published March 30, 2023 by Science journal. Apr 2023
  • Supported by evidence from funeral directors, embalmers (O'Looney[ref][ref][ref]); clinical trials (Jackson[ref][ref][ref]); regulatory/FDA lot and batch toxicity (Yeadon[ref][ref][ref], Paardekooper[ref][ref][ref][ref][ref], Latypova[ref][ref][ref][ref], Schmeling[ref][ref][ref], McKernan[ref][ref][ref][ref]); financial (Austin Fitts[ref][ref][ref][ref], Titus[ref][ref][ref]); VAERS; many other evidence collections and analysts.

Man and Society 

  • Relevance of Roman Catholic Church, pre-Vatican II.
  • Pope Pius XII, On the Moral Limits of Medical Research and Treatment (1952, post-Nuremberg):

    “[I]nsofar as the moral justification of the experiments rests on the mandate of the public authority, and therefore on the subordination of the individual to the community, of the individual’s welfare to the common welfare, it is based on an erroneous explanation of this principle. It must be noted that, in his personal being, man is not finally ordered to usefulness to society. On the contrary, the community exists for man.” 

  • Totalitarianism – Perversion of “common good.”
    † That’s the sort of distinction that we’re dealing with now. Because the totalitarians at the World Economic Forum and Bank for International Settlements[††][†††] pervert the concept of the common good to say that individuals are subordinate to the common good and that you can do anything you want to up to and including killing them if you can make a case — or if you can get enough people to believe — that that’s good for the planet or it’s good for the control of this coronavirus or whatever. Restoring the proper understanding of the purpose of society and how man fits with it is really important.”

LEGAL HISTORY - AMERICAN DOMESTIC BIOTERRORISM PROGRAM

Enabling statutes, regulations, executive orders, guidance documents and budget allocations.
Katherine Watt, Bailiwick News, May 2023

At least six Congressionally-authorized statutory frameworks and related budget appropriations, reinforced through Presidential Executive Orders and related executive branch declarations,[1] and implemented through hundreds of regulatory amendments,[2] mostly promulgated through the Federal Register since 1969, appear to have authorized and funded a coordinated US Government attack (actors), on the American people (targets), using toxic biological and chemical material (bioagents/biochemical weapons) distributed across state borders labelled as “Covid-19 vaccines.”[3]

These biochemical weapons have been fraudulently marketed by the US Government and pharmaceutical weapons manufacturers including Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and their manufacturing subcontractors as "safe and effective vaccines," following the transfer of the US Government’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Program, formerly housed in the Department of Defense (DOD), to the Public Health Emergency (PHE) Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) Medical Countermeasures (MCM) program.

The American chemical and biological warfare program is now housed in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and jointly operated by DOD, HHS, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, most other federal agencies and their subordinate departments, divisions, offices, authorities, enterprises, committees, advisory boards and employees.

Six of the enabling statutes, in chronological order of Congressional enactment:

 

READ COMPLETE ANALYSIS


Technocracy Videodrome

 

Master List

 

For a while, I’ve been posting articles that have a fair number of embedded videos on certain transformative technological breakthroughs that have occurred in the past several years, alongside a great deal of commentary on their potential negative implications for society, but the fact of the matter is that there are tons of recorded seminars, presentations, and clips on neurowarfare, the Internet of Bodies, Synthetic Biology, Smart Cities, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Security, and their health, policy, ethical, and societal implications.

All of these issues are fundamentally interlinked. If we take for granted that a so-called biodigital convergence is right around the corner, and that AI might be used to engineer artificial organisms and interface directly with them using nanotechnology, and so forth, or that AI might be used to gather biometric data from humans using mass surveillance and run inference on it and use that information to generate targeted subliminal propaganda, and so on, it stands to reason that neurowar, IoB/Transhumanism, synbio, Smart Cities, 4IR, AI, COGSEC, and so on, are all deeply interrelated concepts that feed directly into each other, with the overall goal of creating a sort of global, technocratic, eugenicist, Neo-Malthusian, communitarian Society 2.0. Imagine a society assembled piecemeal from pie-in-the-sky TED Talks. No one wants that, right?

Some of these videos have featured in previous articles, but I thought it would be a good idea to put together a mega-playlist. A one-stop shop, so to speak, with some brief summaries to let the viewer know what they’re in for, and what we might take away from the footage. I recommend using the Return YouTube Dislike extension on your browser so you can see just how many people are appalled by this information.

An earlier version of this article had all the videos posted as embeds, but this practically broke the page because of how many videos there were. They have now been replaced with hyperlinks. Click the headings to view the vids.

I recommend going into split-screen mode with the list on one side and the player on the other.

So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Dr. James Giordano: The Brain is the Battlefield of the Future

 

This 2018 presentation given by the DARPA and IEEE-affiliated bioethicist James Giordano to an audience at West Point is absolutely chilling. In it, he outlines the possibility of nanoparticles and clotting agents being used to target the brains of an adversary nation, including dissidents, the civilian population, et cetera. Highlights include:

  1. A hypothetical scenario about the use of neuroweapons to target the leaders of extremist groups and make their followers dissociate from them due to their drastic shift in personality.

  2. The insinuation that people’s biometric data might be hacked to make them appear to have illnesses they don’t actually have, or that people might be driven mad with hypochondria over the threat of an imagined bioweapon attack.

  3. The assertion that neuroweapons can take many forms; not just nanoparticles, but also viruses and chemical agents that specifically target the brain.


Dr. Charles Morgan on Psycho-Neurobiology and War

 

This 2018 presentation at West Point’s Modern War Institute by Dr. Charles Morgan outlines how synthetic biology and chemogenetics might be used to manipulate human brains using engineered cells with designer receptors. Someone’s mind could be completely taken over by a gene therapy drug targeting their brain cells and rendering those cells susceptible to designer chemical agents. It is beyond eerie.

Consider how AI and protein structure prediction could be used to hasten this process of gene and cell engineering, devising proteins with novel functions to more precisely control brain cells.


Dr. James Giordano - "Neuroethics: Moral Issues from Synapse to Society"

 

How long has James Giordano been at this? A very long time, as this presentation from 2011 demonstrates.


Brain Science from Bench to Battlefield: The Realities - and Risks - of Neuroweapons | CGSR Seminar

 

This is a 2017 presentation by James Giordano at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research (CGSR). He elaborates on how neuroscience can be weaponized and used in warfare.


TRADOC Mad Scientist 2017 Georgetown: Neurotechnology in National Defense w/ Dr. Giordano

 

This is a presentation at Georgetown University in 2017, along the same lines as Dr. Giordano’s other presentations on the weaponization of neuroscience.


Dr James Giordano tells us about what's coming in terms of Neuroethics

 

In this podcast from 2018, James Giordano outlines the need for regulatory oversight, especially to control advancements by DIYers and biohackers.


Apprehension of the Superior Other in Science Fiction - Dr. James Giordano Interview - LMU Bioethics

 

In this clip from 2018, James Giordano equates previous developments in human evolution (the adoption of tool use and communication, and so forth) to the modern advent of transhumanism.


Trans-Humanism - An O’Malley Interview with Dr. James Giordano - LMU Bioethics

 

This short clip dating to 2018 outlines James Giordano’s views on transhumanism and human self-directed evolution.


HDIAC Podcast - Weaponizing Brain Science: Neuroweapons (Part 1) (Part 2)

 

In this two-part podcast dating to 2020, James Giordano goes into detail about how neuroscience can be weaponized.


Dr. James Giordano: Battlescape Brain: Military and Intelligence Use of Neurocognitive Science

 

In this presentation from 2020, Dr. James Giordano further outlines many advances in NeuroS/T and how they may be weaponized. This covers a lot of the same ground as his presentation at West Point, two years earlier.


James Giordano: Bold New Neuroscience; Brave New Neuroethics?

 

In this video dating to 2021, James Giordano outlines many recent advances in neuroscience and the serious ethical issues that they raise. The slides used in this video can be seen here.

Even the supposed upsides of the technology are a double-edged sword. One presentation slide suggests that we might use neurotechnology to abolish pain, sadness, suffering, et cetera, mirroring David Pearce’s Hedonistic Imperative. This might sound like a good thing on the surface; no one wants to be depressed or anxious all the time. However, it’s also important to recognize that human mental illnesses are often a reflection of our lifestyle and whether or not our basic needs are being fulfilled.

If someone feels euphoria all the time, no matter how depressing their living conditions are, they can be heinously abused, confined in a small room, and denied food, sex, entertainment, and so on, without consequence. A human incapable of feeling suffering is a human capable of being physically warehoused, who will wither away with smiles on their faces.


Neurotech the Gateway to Exponential Tech - Dr. James Giordano - Neuroscientist & Neuroethicist

 

In this video, James Giordano outlines recent developments in wearable EEGs and other neurotechnologies, and how this will lead to runaway advancements in technology in a sort of feedback loop (presumably leading to a technological singularity). Toward the end, he goes into the neuroscience of free will.


McCain Conference 2022 Panel: Brain Computer Interface

 

In this 2022 presentation, James Giordano goes into great detail about the various societal and ethical implications of BCIs. Also discussed is the usage of BCIs to make supersoldiers, to deaden their emotions, enhance their killing capacity, make them immune to PTSD or incapable of serving as witnesses to a humanitarian law violation by erasing their memories, et cetera.


The Battle for Your Mind: Neuroscience, Technology & the OODA Loop with James Giordano, PhD

 

In this stream from last August, James Giordano holds forth on a very wide array of topics relating to neuroscience, AI, and the sociopolitical implications. This one is a must-watch.


2023 IBB World Championship | Neuroethics Lecture

 

In this stream, also dating from last August, James Giordano covers a wide variety of neuroethics topics.


Conversations with Experts: Dr Armin Krishnan - July 7, 2022

 

This 2022 interview with Armin Krishnan covers the long history of mind control and neuroweapons, from DARPA’s earliest experiments with microwaves, to modern innovations.


Interview with Dr Armin Krishnan

 

This 2023 interview with Dr. Armin Krishnan covers many aspects of modern warfare, including autonomous weapon systems, neurowarfare, and so on.


America's Book Of Secrets: DARPA's Secret Mind Control Technology (Season 4) | History

 

In this clip from the History Channel show, America’s Book of Secrets, DARPA’s N3 program to develop wireless BCIs is outlined.


Direct Neural Interface & DARPA - Dr Justin Sanchez

 

This presentation by Dr. Justin Sanchez details the many applications of DNI/BCI tech.


Mind Melds and Brain Beams: The Dawn of Brain-to-Brain Communication

 

This presentation from 2016 details how BCIs may be used to facilitate direct brain-to-brain communication.


Advanced Materials To Enable Wireless Brain-Machine Interface

 

This is a 2021 video by Sakhrat Khizroev that describes how DARPA’s N3 nanotransducers work.


Jacob Robinson | Minimally Invasive Neurotech for Mental Health

 

Jacob Robinson is one of the main figures involved in the development of Rice’s MOANA offering for DARPA’s N3 program. Rice University is attempting to develop a nanotransducer-based BCI that uses a helmet to deliver light, ultrasound, and magnetic fields through the skull to activate and read back from nanotransducer-transfected cells.


Wireless linkage of brains may soon go to human testing

 

This clip from 2021 outlines the overall goals of MOANA.


Introducing the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative

 

This clip from 2020 is about Rice University’s commitment to neuroengineering.


Magnetic control of select neural circuits

 

In this unlisted clip from Rice University, nanotransducers are demonstrated to force a fly’s wings to open when the fly is exposed to a magnetic field. There is an article with more details.


FULL REVEAL! Elon Musk's Neuralink chip tested live in pig brains

This is a 2020 demonstration of Neuralink with implanted pigs.


Neuralink Show and Tell, Fall 2022

This is Neuralink’s Show and Tell on their BCI tech from late 2022.


Ready for Brain Transparency?

 

In this 2023 presentation at the WEF by Nita Farahany, the various disturbing biopolitical implications of BCIs are outlined.


When Humans Become Cyborgs | DAVOS 2020

 

In this 2020 meeting of the WEF, the transhumanist ambitions of Davos are clearly stated.


Empowering next-generation implantable brain interfaces | Timothy Constandinou

 

This 2017 clip from the World Economic Forum describes a possible BCI tech, among other things.


Will the Future Be Human? - Yuval Noah Harari

 

In this 2018 presentation, Yuval Noah Harari describes how mass biometric surveillance and algorithmic governance are taking over.


Surveillance Under The Skin | Dr. Yuval Noah Harari

 

In this clip, Yuval Noah Harari talks about how surveillance is moving under the skin, and how humans are now “hackable animals”.


Yuval Noah Harari on the Rise of Homo Deus

 

In this video from 2016, Yuval Noah Harari describes the rise of Homo Deus and the “useless class”.


How to Upload a Mind (In Three Not-So-Easy Steps)

 

This is a clip by Rational Animations on mind-uploading.


Randal Koene | Substrate Independent Minds: A Brief Tutorial

 

This is a presentation by Randal Koene about Substrate-Independent Minds (or SIM), a common transhumanist concept.


'Digital Abomination': Transhumanism, the New AI Religion and the Globalist Agenda for Your Future

 

In this recent clip, Joe Allen explains how scientism is replacing religion and promotes his book, Dark Aeon.


Understanding Technocracy and the Implications of Control

 

In this clip, Paul Kingsnorth describes what technocracy fundamentally is.


Patrick Wood: Technocracy Rising Interview (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

 

In this excellent three-part series, Patrick Wood describes how technocracy is the basis of a new global, supranational movement to completely revamp all systems of governance around communitarian principles.

These vids are heavily suppressed in the YouTube search results and won’t readily come up even when you directly search for Patrick Wood and Technocracy.


The Evil Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism | Patrick Wood

 

This is a presentation by Patrick Wood that links transhumanism and technocracy together.


What Is the Internet of Bodies?

 

This clip from the RAND Corporation in 2020 serves to explain what the Internet of Bodies actually is. For obvious reasons, they disabled the comments. Also, the video has more dislikes than likes.


Get Ready for the Internet of Bodies | Mary Lee | TEDxManhattanBeach

 

This 2022 TEDx talk by Mary Lee about the Internet of Bodies is ratioed like nothing else, but you wouldn’t know that without an extension to return YouTube dislikes, because Alphabet decided that dissent should be invisible, in order to manufacture the appearance of universal consent. However, the comments are enabled, and are almost universally negative.


What is the Internet of Bodies?

 

In this video, Mary Lee speaks to a smaller audience about IoB and takes questions from them.


Prepare for the ‘internet of bodies’

 

In this clip, futurist Dr. Catherine Ball describes how the IoB will revolutionize people’s lives with personalized healthcare, apparently.


Center for Internet of Bodies (C-IoB) Launch

 

A short 2021 clip from Purdue’s C-IoB launch.


Wilson Quarterly Spotlight: AI and the “Internet of Bodies”

 

In this video from the Wilson Center, Richard Solash and Eleonore Pauwels are interviewed about IoB and its social implications.


Will the internet of things change the human body forever?

 

This clip from axess.ai serves as a basic outline of the IoB.


Bioprinting, the Internet of Bodies, Intellectual Property, and Human Rights - Dr. Bruce Baer Arnold

 

In this clip from 2021, Dr. Bruce Arnold covers the IoB and cutting-edge biotech and its relationship to intellectual property law.


Futurism Internet of Bodies by Ghislaine Boddington of body data space

 

In this exceptionally eerie 2019 talk from Ghislaine Boddington, she outlines how the IoB will lead to alternative forms of embodiment and sensory experience.


11th WIEF Global Discourse on Internet of Bodies: Merging Man and Machine

 

In this 2021 video from the 11th WIEF Global Discourse, the various security, privacy, and ethical risks of the Internet of Bodies are explored in detail.


The Internet of Bodies: Have you been upgraded?

 

In this podcast from Observation Deck, he reacts with undisguised horror at the embrace of IoB by scientists, thought leaders, and policymakers.


Samvaad-Talk by Prof. Kurian Polachan, IIIT-Bangalore (Aug 7, 2023)

 

In this video from IIIT-Bangalore, some of the key scientific breakthroughs related to IoB are outlined in detail. The presentation slides cover many technical aspects of this research, particularly how the human body itself may be used as a conduit for digital devices to communicate.


ARRC Seminar Series - Prof. Ian F. Akyildiz

 

This seminar is by Ian Akyildiz, a scientist associated with IEEE, and covers various aspects of IoB, IoBNT, and its relationship to next-gen wireless infrastructure (i.e. 6G networks).


Talk by Prof Ian F Akyildiz on 6G and Beyond The Future of Wireless Communications Systems

 

This talk by Ian Akyildiz goes into significant detail about the underlying technical aspects of 6G (and by extension, IoB) infrastructure.


Ultrabroadband communication & networking solutions to unleash THz Band | ITU Journal | Webinar

 

In this 2022 webinar from ITU, the use of THz-frequency waves in next-generation wireless infrastructure is covered in detail.


AI, machine learning RAN intelligent controller for 6G | ITU Journal | Webinar

 

In this 2023 webinar from ITU, the role of AI and machine learning in controlling and directing 6G infrastructure is outlined.


WINLAB Seminar - Josep Miguel Jornet "The Internet of Nano-Things"

 

This is a webinar from Josep Jornet about IoNT and the Internet of Bodies, with a great deal of technical detail.


International Guest Webinar - Dr. Josep Jornet

 

This is a webinar from Josep Jornet on the usage of light to manipulate cell behavior and gene expression.


Nanonetworking in the Terahertz Band (and Beyond): From Nanomaterials to Macrosystems

 

This Zoom meeting with Josep Jornet outlines how Terahertz-band communication may be utilized with nanonetworks, and suggests that a wearable smart band may be used to detect the biomolecular signals of lung cancer.


Cut: Internet of BioNano Things (IoBNT)

 

This clip about IoBNT, like many others, uses soothing stock music to try and soften the horror.


IoBNT To Delay the Beginning of Type-2 Diabetes Through Artificial Insulin Segregation

 

This presentation from 2018 details how IoBNT devices may be used to manipulate pancreatic beta cells to delay the onset of diabetes.


The Internet of Bio Nano Things | Bio Nano Technology

 

This clip outlines how IoBNT devices may make use of biomimetics to convert digital signals to molecular ones.


Interfaces for the Internet of Bio-Nano-Things

 

This clip is a presentation from Stefan Angerbauer’s doctoral thesis about IoBNT, describing how these devices will make use of molecular communication.


The Internet of Bio-Nanothings

 

This 2016 clip outlines some of the difficulties in passing signals through the human body.


Dr. Bige Deniz Unluturk - 10/06/2023 - Molecular Communication Platforms at Multiple Scales

 

This recent presentation at Michigan State University outlines many of the challenges involved in developing biomimetic systems that take advantage of molecular communication.


Internet of Nano Things (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

 

This three-part series by Abdallah Noaman is in Arabic, but the slides are in English and well worth reading over.


Biological Layer for 6G/B6G: Einstein, Reynolds, and Communications | Prof Chan-Byoung Chae

 

This 2022 webinar has a great deal of information about molecular communication principles.


What's new at the interface between nanotechnology and biology?

 

This clip from 2017 has Dr. Vince Rotello describing the emergence of bionanotechnology.


How has the Internet of Things evolved into the Internet of Everything?

 

This clip from Professor Ozgur B. Akan outlines how the internet is slowly becoming an Internet of Everything, which will incorporate every human, plant, and animal.


The Internet of Everything | Mass Surveillance | Silicon Valley | Documentary

 

This documentary on the Moconomy channel about the Internet of Everything is a real eye-opener.


David Roux - Social Trauma: Technology Tsunamis and Other Dangerous Consequences of Higher Education

 

In this 2018 presentation by David Roux, there are a few mentions about how miniaturization will lead to ubiquitous computing, where smart tech is everywhere and in everything, including clothing.


What Is Biodigital Convergence?

 

In this 2022 clip, Professor Travis Smith expresses concern about the implications of biodigital convergence.


What is the biodigital convergence?

 

This is Policy Horizons Canada’s own clip on biodigital convergence.


Technologists share visions of our future world

 

In this WEF video, they openly admit to an agenda of reengineering organisms “for beneficial purposes”.


Impromptu: What To Know About Internet of Bio Nano Things w/ Alison McDowell

 

This four-hour-long stream with Zakiya Sankara-Jabar and Alison McDowell touches on some disturbing biopolitical, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of IoB and AI.


The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Global Technocratic Takeover w/ Alison McDowell (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5)

This remarkable five-part series by Alison McDowell covers 4IR and technocracy at length.


What is Bionanotechnology?

 

This RSA Animates-style whiteboard animation from 2011 by Shawn Douglas explains what bionanotechnology is.


Biotechnology/Nanotechnology | Andrew Hessel | SingularityU Germany Summit 2017

 

At the SingularityU Summit in 2017, Andrew Hessel gave this rather disturbing talk about bionanotech and its implications.


Bio Nano Technology-New Frontiers in Molecular Engineering: Andreas Mershin at TEDxAthens

 

This TEDx Talk by Andreas Mershin from 2013 discusses how biomimetic solar panels might be more effective than conventional ones.


Nanotechnology is not simply about making things smaller | Noushin Nasiri | TEDxMacquarieUniversity

 

This TEDx talk by Noushin Nasiri helps one visualize just how small the scales involved in nanotech are.


Proteins Electronic Sciences and Bionanotechnology

 

The audio in this 2017 presentation by Andreas Mershin is very hard to hear, but the slides on bionanotech are interesting.


Nanobiotechnology and its applications

 

This presentation describes how bionanotechnology can be used to manipulate the functions of cells, and how it may be used in biofabrication.


Nano Biotechnology The CRISPR Platform _Your Future In Nano

 

This video describes how CRISPR-CAS9 works.


Bionanotechnology and Next Generation of Intelligent Medical Devices

 

This 2014 presentation by Dr. Stanislav Emelianov describes a possible method for treating cancer with bionanotechnology.


Illinois NanoBio Node - CABPN Workshop - BioMEMS and Bionanotechnology: Biology and Engineering

 

In this clip from 2013, various types of hypothetical nano-scale biomimetic systems are described.


Nanobiotechnology and application

 

This video presentation from 2021 outlines various types of nanomaterials and their potential applications.


Ehud Gazit - Manipulating molecular self-assembly for drug development

 

This is a 2011 presentation by Ehud Gazit on the use of engineered amyloids for drug development.


Quantum Mechanical Phenomena in Self-Assembled Peptide and Amyloid Proteins Nanostructures

 

This is a presentation by Nadav Amdursky about quantum mechanical phenomena in amyloid nanostructures, and how peptide nanotubes can be harnessed for their optical properties.


New Functional Nano‐materials for Molecular Theranostics

 

A further elaboration by Ehud Gazit on how amyloid-based nanomaterials may be harnessed for their optical, piezoelectric, and semi-conductive properties.


Structural Biology | D1S3 9/21 Peptide and Metabolite Self-Assembly: Physiology - Ehud Gazit

 

This is a 2022 presentation by Ehud Gazit on peptide nanotubes and their quantum characteristics.


Physics in 2D Nanoarchitectonics

 

This is a very comprehensive and nearly 3-hour-long presentation on 2D nanoscale materials and their fascinating properties. Can you believe this has only 293 views? It’s incredible.


Scientists Create an Artificial Cell With Synthetic Genome

 

In this video, Anton Petrov describes how scientists have recently created artificial cells with synthetic genomes, essentially playing genetic LEGO.


Artificially Made Cell Evolves Shockingly Fast For Unknown Reasons

 

In this video by Anton Petrov, we’re given an update on how synthetic cells are evolving at an unexpectedly rapid pace.


Michael Levin - Plasticity w/out genetic change: bioelectric embryos & synthetic proto-organisms

 

In this 2022 video, Michael Levin describes how the patterning of organisms is a bioelectric process.


Michael Levin: The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life | TED

 

In this 2021 video, Michael Levin further explains how membrane potential has a profound effect on cell proliferation and organism development.


Xenobot: The revolutionary new robot made from frogs | Michael Levin and Lex Fridman

 

Michael Levin holds forth on computer-designed “xenobots”, which make use of biomimetics and generative design.


Free will is an illusion - a biologist explains | Michael Levin and Lex Fridman

 

In this video, Michael Levin explains how free will is an illusion.


27 Michael Levin - Memory and intelligent problem-solving by unconventional collective intelligences

 

In this video, Michael Levin outlines how cells form a sort of collective intelligence.


Unlocking Diverse Intelligence: Hacking the Spectrum of Mind with Michael Levin | Mind-Body Solution

 

A presentation by Michael Levin about how minds are technically everywhere, if we count cells as thinking machines.


Taming the Technological Dragon and Re-Minding the Universe (dialogue with Michael Levin)

 

In this recent webinar, Michael Levin talks about technology and cognition and their relationship.


The science of the “self” | Michael Levin

 

This is a video by Michael Levin on how your cells become “you”.


Megacities on the Move (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)

 

These 2011 clips by Forum for the Future are disturbingly prescient in their depiction of the communitarian and “sustainable” future that the technocrats wish to create.


We are failing to see how much better off humanity could be

 

This clip by Rational Animations suggests that transhumanism might be used not only to eliminate death, but to enable entirely new sensory experiences that never existed before.


Songdo: Go Inside The City Of The Future

 

This is a 2018 video about the Songdo IBD in South Korea and its Smart City tech.


How South Korea Built a City Out of The Sea

 

This 2021 video is about how the Songdo IBD was built.


Another failed city project. How did the Smart City Songdo in South Korea become a ghost town??

 

This is a 2023 presentation about how the Songdo IBD is a ghost town.


South Korea is a Cyberpunk Dystopia

 

This video essay by Quinn Henry describes how South Korea is a Blade Runner-style cyberpunk dystopia.


What is a smart city? | CNBC Explains

 

This 2017 clip by CNBC describes what a smart city is, and how it involves putting CCTV cameras everywhere to track, monitor, and classify people’s activity.


Smart City: How do you live in a Smart City? | Future Smart City Projects | Surveillance or Utopia?

 

This 2019 video is about how Smart Cities are being developed.


Tel Aviv's Smart City journey with Microsoft

 

This is a video on how Microsoft Israel are turning Tel Aviv into a Smart City.


Tel Aviv-Jaffa gets set to become the world’s first city with a network of smart roadways

 

Oh, yeah, let’s just drive our cars over induction chargers all day. I’m sure this will be fantastic for our health.


Smart Cities: Singapore

 

This 2016 video is about Singapore’s embrace of Smart City tech.


12-Year-Old Mocks Greta Thunberg On Mass Surveillance & Smart Cities

 

In this video, a 12-year-old girl utterly annihilates the whole concept of 15-minute cities.


Adam Greenfield on the Dangers of Smart Cities

 

In this 2020 presentation, Adam Greenfield describes how Smart Cities will be used as data sinks to gather information on people for the purpose of Surveillance Capitalism.


THE LINE: Saudi Arabia's City of the Future in NEOM

 

This is a documentary about the construction of The Line, a bizarre 170-kilometer-long wall-shaped arcology in Saudi Arabia that will supposedly house nine million people.


The best explanation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution ever

 

In this 2019 clip, Graeme Codrington explains what the Fourth Industrial Revolution is.


What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

 

In this recent video, David Shapiro describes the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as well as the ones that preceded it.


4IR factory of the future

 

This webinar describes how 4IR and digitization were used to speed up the production of ventilators during the pandemic. Kind of freaky in hindsight, now that we know how bad the outcomes were from ventilator use.


GPT Explained!

 

This video from 2020 explains how GPT and the transformer architecture works.


Illustrated Guide to Transformers Neural Network: A step by step explanation

 

This video from 2020 is a detailed outline of how transformer-based neural networks function.


Let's build GPT: from scratch, in code, spelled out.

 

This very cool video from earlier this year demonstrates how GPT is built, from scratch.


What Is AlphaFold? | NEJM

 

This is a presentation by NEJM on AlphaFold, a protein structure prediction AI.


Highly Accurate Protein Structure Prediction with AlphaFold | SimonKohl

 

This is a lengthy 2022 presentation on protein structure prediction with AlphaFold.


The Coming of Age of De Novo Protein Design

 

This is an NIH lecture on de novo protein design, and how deep learning algorithms may be used to greatly accelerate the process.


The Future of Security - Leveraging Cognitive Security for Better Human Decision-Making

 

This is a 2018 presentation on how AI may be used to scrape the internet for security data and intel.


Newport Lecture Series: "Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Warfare" with Yvonne Masakowski

 

This is a lengthy and detailed 2022 presentation by the US Naval War College on artificial intelligence and cognitive warfare.


COGSEC 2021 Fireside Chat w/ Dan Rather, Natalie Wynn (ContraPoints) & Avery Trufelman - Mar 4, 2021

 

Dan Rather, Natalie Wynn, and Avery Trufelman discuss “cognitive security” and misinformation.


Simulation #574 Dr. David Perlman - Misinformation Security

 

David Perlman, the founder of CogSec Technologies, describes how he wants to provide misinformation security services to social media companies.


Disinformation, Infosec, Cognitive Security, and Influence Manipulation (CxOTalk #353)

 

A talk by Sara-Jayne Terp, Pablo Breuer, and David A. Bray about infosec, COGSEC, and influence operations.


From Artificial Intelligence to Cybersecurity and Cognitive Security (CXOTalk #781)

 

This is a talk from earlier this year on how AI can be used in cognitive warfare and cybersecurity.


'No, No, No, No': Dan Bishop Forces Mayorkas To Answer Question About Social Media Suppression

 

Just for fun, here’s Mayorkas turning redder than a beet while being grilled on censorship.


2070 Paradigm Shift, a TED talk by Sam Hyde (HD)

 

How this series of videos makes me feel.

-Spartacus

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


“The World As It Was”: 1950s Seeds of Fear Sown Then, Poisoning Us Today

by Edward J. Curtin, Jr., 17 Mar 2024, edwardcurtin.com

Here’s a film about the 1950s – “The World As It Was” – that will tell you a great deal about life in the U.S.A. today, while disabusing anyone of the notion that nostalgia for that mephitic decade is in order, for it was a time when “democracy” tended toward totalitarianism.  In doing so, it sowed the bitter fruit that is poisoning us today.  Without understanding the long-standing effects of those years, it is impossible to grasp the deepest dimensions of our current nightmare.  Chapter One of the documentary series, Four Died Trying, directed by John Kirby and produced by Libby Handros, appropriately subtitled: “To see where we are, look where we’ve been,” does that brilliantly.

The series opened four months ago with “The Prologue” (see review) wherein the lives, importance, and assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy are explored; how the government and media buried the truth of who assassinated them and why; and why it matters today.  Season One will unfold over the next year with chapters covering their lives and assassinations in greater detail.  Season Two will be devoted to the government and media coverups, citizen investigations, and the intelligence agencies and their media mouthpieces’ mind control operations aimed at the American people that continue today.

Chapter One – “The World As It Was” – is about the 1950s, the rise of the Cold War with its propaganda, McCarthyism, the development of the military-industrial complex, the CIA, red-baiting, betrayals, blacklists, the abrogation of civil rights, censorship, and the ever present fear of nuclear war and the promotion of fallout shelters that set the stage for the killing fields of the 1960s and the CIA’s ruthless machinations.

One could say that the 1950s were the Foundation of Fear upon which the horrors of the 1960s were built, and that now we are reaping the flowers of evil that have sprung up everywhere we look because the evils of those decades have never been adequately addressed.

The film opens with President Eisenhower delivering his famous Farewell Address, warning about the growing power of the military-industrial complex.  It is a short and powerful speech, concealing not a smidgen of hypocrisy since it must not have been Eisenhower who presided for eight years from 1953-1961 as this complex grew and grew and he poured 2 billion dollars in weapons and aid and a thousand military advisers to the ruthless and corrupt Vietnamese dictator Ngô Dinh Diêm, while saying he was “an example for people everywhere who hate tyranny and love freedom.”  His speech, while still good, reminds me of all those who spend their careers quiet as church mice as the wars and assassinations rage on only to find their voices in opposition once they retire and collect their pensions.

In response to Eisenhower’s speech, some of which we hear, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – one of a hundred interviews done for this series over six years –  says that Eisenhower’s speech “is probably today in retrospect the most important speech in American history.”  While that is debatable (I would pick JFK’s American University speech), he rightly emphasizes the importance of Ike’s speech and the fact that his uncle, President Kennedy, fought against the military-industrial complex handed him by Eisenhower.  This is important, for although JFK did get elected emphasizing the Cold War rhetoric of a non-existent missile gap between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, he very quickly changed, having been betrayed by Allen Dulles and the CIA regarding the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Vietnam, Laos, etc.  The military brass quickly came to hate Kennedy, a naval war hero from World War II.  His three year transformation into a great peacemaker – and therefore his assassination by the CIA and its friends – is a story many still would like to squelch.  This documentary series will prevent that.

Those who control our present and wish to control our future are hard at work today trying to control our past and they will therefore hate this truthful film that is a powerful antidote to their attempted amnesia.  In thirty-nine sobering and entertaining minutes (with emphasis on both words), “The World As It Was” illuminates a period in U.S. history that is often dismissed as the staid and boring 1950s but was in fact when the infrastructure for today’s censorship, chaos, and fear was laid.  It was not the era, as a baseball movie about Jimmy Piersall and his depression from 1957 put it, when “Fear Strikes Out,” but the time when fear burrowed very deep into the American psyche and anxiety became a weapon of state.  Is it any wonder that today could be called “the age of depression, fear, anxiety, and pill popping”?

It is interesting to note that Eisenhower’s warning also contained an admonition to beware the growth of unchecked science, technology, and a future when computers would replace blackboards.  If he were still alive, he would no doubt not recognize the country controlled by what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT).  This vast computer-networked monster makes all the warnings about the 1950s snooping, informing, and controlling activities of government agencies seem like child’s play.  They can’t open snail mail now when few send any, but reading computer messages barely necessitates a finger’s movement, or, as Edward Snowden continues to warn, the entire electronic phone system is open sesame for government controllers. Cell phones acting as cells. Blackboards are gone but so is privacy.  The 1950s’ government snooping is pure nostalgia now.  We are through the looking glass.

As then, so today.  Oliver Stone talks about how in those days the constant refrain was “the Russians are coming” and how his father, a Republican stockbroker, told him that “the Russians are inside the country.”  Fear was everywhere, all induced by anti-communist propaganda aimed at controlling the American people.  Stone is still fighting against the Russia bogeyman stories, while today we are told again and again that the Russians are still coming.  We can only assume they are very slow.

Aside from RFK, Jr. and Oliver Stone, in this episode we hear from NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the screenwriter Zachary Sklar, et al.  Because the film is so ingeniously crafted, many of the most powerful voices – for and against the government repression and fear mongering – are those from newsreels and television shows that are artfully spliced between the commentaries of the aforementioned people. For example, to see and hear FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover rant about communists under every bed and to juxtapose that with the calm words of the filmmaker Dalton Trumbo, blackballed as one of the so-called Hollywood Ten, is an exercise in distinguishing sanity from insanity.

To this is added music, advertisements, movie clips, and jingles from the 1950s culture that place the viewer back in time to feel and absorb the “vibes,” as it were, of those days.  Like any era, it was complicated, but the overriding message from the fifties was not about mom making tuna noodle casserole but was that there were commie traitors everywhere throughout society and that every citizen’s obligation was to turn them in, even if that meant turning yourself or your parents in.  Children were taught to get under their desks when the sirens sounded, for they were safe places when the Commie Nukes start coming in.  Civil Defense drills screeched this fear into your every fiber.  In April 1957 the Army Air Defense Command announced that new Nike Hercules missiles with atomic warheads would shortly be installed around New York City, Boston, Providence, etc. to replace conventional warheads.  A spokesman added that these nuclear warheads posed no danger and that if the missiles were used, fallout would be “negligible.”  Of course.

Let me use an anecdote from pop culture that I think sums this up this sick game of fear and distrust – paranoia.  My parents were on a game show in the fall of 1957 called “Do You Trust Your Wife?” hosted by Johnny Carson. By the summer of 1958 the show’s title was changed to “Who Do you Trust?”  I used to joke that Hoover or Senator Joseph McCarthy was behind the change and their English grammar was atrocious, but I realize it was probably some fearful lackeys in the television industry.

Professor Miller, an expert in propaganda, narrates quite a bit of “The World As It Was” and does so admirably.  He correctly points out that to describe the 1950s as the era of McCarthyism is a misnomer, for doing so “let’s the whole system off the hook.”  It was the entire government apparatus that promoted a vast repression based on fear whose aim was to create meek, deferential, and obedient people afraid of their own shadows.

He points out that the basis for all this was established by President Truman in 1947 with his Executive Order 9835 that required loyalty oaths to root out communists in the federal government.  Six months later the CIA was founded and the country was off to the Cold War races with its anti-communist hysteria and the institutionalization of a militarized society.

The Red Menace, nuclear extinction, and the need to root out those traitors who were conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government by force were pounded into people’s minds.  Not only were these traitors in the government, but in the schools and colleges, the labor and racial equality movements – more or less everywhere.  Whom could you trust?  No one, not even yourself.  While McCarthy was eventually censored for going too far when Joseph Welch accused him of having no decency during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, he accomplished the goal of injecting his paranoic poison into the social bloodstream where it remains today, part of the political structure shared by both major parties.

But hope arose, as the film concludes, when JFK was elected in 1960 and in his first week in office went to the theater to see the blackballed screenwriter’s Dalton Trumble’s adaptation of Howard Fast’s novel, Spartacus, about a slave revolt in ancient Rome.  Fast was also blacklisted and wrote the novel secretly.  As RFK, Jr. says, this was a symbolic turning point when this was reported on the front page of The New York Times.

“It [the film Spartacus] is a parable of resistance and heroism that speaks unreservedly to our own times,” wrote the great journalist John Pilger in We Are Spartacus shortly before his death. “There is one ‘precise’ provocateur now; it is clear to see for those who want to see it and foretell its actions. It is a gang of states led by the United States whose stated objective is ‘full spectrum dominance’. Russia is still the hated one, Red China the feared one.”

Yes, today we are told that the Russians are still coming.  The bad old days are back.  But so also is the slaves’ rebellion.

Four Died Trying is a documentary series that is part of this rebellion.  Chapter One, “The World As It Was” shines a very bright light on disturbing U.S. history.  It shows where we have been in order to help us see where we are.  Don’t miss it. “The World As It Was”: A Masterly Documentary Film.


The Hidden Messages of the Power Elite’s Cultural Apparatus

photo by Jeanne Lemlin

by Edward J. Curtin, Jr., 2 May 2024, edwardcurtin.com

To be crucified is to suffer and die slowly and agonizingly.  It was a common form of execution in the ancient world.  It is generally associated with Rome’s killing of Jesus and carries profound symbolic spiritual meaning for Christians.  In its figurative sense, it refers to many types of suffering and death inflicted on the weak by the strong, such as the ongoing genocidal slaughter of Palestinians by the Israel government.

Twenty or so years ago when the wearing of crosses by all types of people was the cultural rage, a woman I know said she was thinking of getting one.  When I asked her why, since she was Jewish, she said it was because she thought they were beautiful.  She seemed oblivious to the fact that to Christians they were gruesome but revelatory spiritual symbols, the equivalent of the electric chair or a noose, but linked to the Easter Resurrection and the non-violent triumph over death that is at the core of Christianity.

Her focus on beauty forcibly struck me that secular culture had triumphed in its establishment of an anti-creed creed wherein the pursuit of a sense of well-being and aesthetic tranquility had trumped traditional belief, while it used all faiths in its pursuit of a self-centered nihilism through a faux-spirituality linked to a precious aesthetic of beauty.

Philip Rieff noticed this in the mid-1960s when he wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic:

To raise the question of nihilism, as sociologists since Auguste Comte have done, demonstrates a major change in tone: the note of apprehension has gone out of the asking. We believe that we know something our predecessors did not: that we can live freely at last, enjoying all our senses – except the sense of the past – as unremembering, honest, and friendly barbarians all, in a technological Eden. . . . this culture, which once imagined itself inside a church, feels trapped in something like a zoo of separate cages. Modern men are like Rilke’s panther, forever looking out of one cage into another.

While today those cages would better be described as cells – as in cell phones – Rieff’s point was prescient in the extreme, echoing in its way Max Weber’s 1905 prophecy in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism of the coming “iron cage.”

It would be understandable if you assumed the photograph of the crucifix that precedes my words was taken in a church since its foregrounding before the apse of the Medieval Spanish church of San Martin at Fuentidueña makes it seem so.  It was not, except if you realize that museums have become the modern churches, where people flock to revere art for art’s sake and perhaps to find some consolation they have lost at a deeper level.

Museums that have been built and maintained by the very rich to serve as their own churches to the glory of mammon and their own self-deluded immortalization.

Mammon that has been built on the backs of the poor and working class, just as these edifices have.

Beneath all high cultural institutions such as museums and arts venues like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center in New York, etc., lies the expropriated labor and land of the lower classes, the same classes whose sweat and blood was exploited throughout capital’s historical transmutations from commercial to industrial to financial to create the immense wealth of the super-rich.

There is a reason the nineteenth-century America industrialists such as Vanderbilt, Mellon, Carnegie, Rockefeller, et al. were called “The Robber Barons.”  They were crooks.  They are still with us, of course, aided and abetted by today’s latest billionaire class.  They build and finance the aforementioned cultural institutions as well as own and operate the major institutions of mass communication and entertainment, such as newspapers, television networks, telecommunication corporations, film studios, etc. – the entertainment industrial complex.  In this direct communication capacity, they control the mediation of “reality” to the general population.  They serve the interests of what the great crusading sociologist C. Wright Mills called the power elite in and out of government, of which they are an interlocking part, and through which they move smoothly in a game of revolving chairs.  They operate the great Spectacle for the general population while moving the levers of power backstage.

When he died, Mills was working on a massive book exploring what he provisionally titled The Cultural Apparatus.  He defined this complex as follows:

The cultural apparatus is composed of all the organizations and milieux in which artistic, intellectual, and scientific work goes on and of the means by which such work is made available . . . it contains an elaborate set of institutions: of schools and theaters, newspapers and census bureaus,  studios, laboratories, museums, little magazines and radio networks. . . Inside this network, standing between men and events, the images, meanings, and slogans that define the worlds in which [we] live are organized and compared, maintained and revised, lost and cherished, hidden, debunked, celebrated.  Taken as a whole the cultural apparatus is the lens of mankind through which men see; the medium by which they report and interpret what they see.

Columbia University, where he taught and is today in the news headlines for its police crackdown on student dissent for their pro-Palestinian protest, is one of those elite cultural institutions, a place Mills was never comfortable at and whose colleagues looked at him askance for his critique of the power elite’s warfare state.

Columbia, with its racist history as it saw its elite status threatened by the growth of the neighboring black community in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, and Columbia’s further expansion into these neighborhoods since.

Columbia, like all elite cultural institutions, born in its own mind sui generis and raised to the heights in purity and innocence, but whose foundation is rotten with dirty money.

Yet, as Terry Eagleton recently wrote in the London Review of Books, “This is not the way culture generally likes to see itself. Like the Oedipal child, it tends to disavow its lowly parentage and fantasise that it sprang from its own loins, self-generating and self-fashioning.”  Like Columbia and all the elite universities of “higher learning” –  Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc. – that serve as legitimating tools for the power elite and their mendaciousness, the museums and other well-known arts institutions exert an enormous influence, not only over culture in the high cultural sense, but over the transformation of society as a whole, often in ways that go unnoticed.  Eagleton again:

There’s an irony here, since few things bind art so closely to its material context as its claim to stand free of that context. This is because the work of art as autonomous and self-determining, an idea born sometime in the late 18th century, is the model of a version of the human subject that has been rapidly gaining ground in actual life. Men and women are now seen as authors of themselves . . .

The photo of the crucifix and the apse that precedes my words was recently taken in The Cloisters in upper Manhattan, New York City, where the ghosts of dead religious beliefs prowl about the rooms.  It is meant to present a “chapel-like gallery.”  The Cloisters is a museum owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is now known as The Met Cloisters.  It, and the beautiful 67 acre Fort Tryon Park upon which it sits, was created and financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. who, according to The Met’s website was fascinated with the past.  “The expert artistry of medieval art as well as its innate spirituality strongly appealed to this philanthropist and collector,” we are told.

Spirituality from the Middle Ages, I will amend, that when it had been transported to the museum was devoid of its living context and could be presented as a gift from a Robber Baron family to the people of NYC who needed to be uplifted by the noblesse oblige kindness of the Rockefellers.  Dead spirits devoid of living inner religiousness who smuggle secret messages to a public hungry for meaning.

Like my friend who considered getting a cross, Rockefeller no doubt found the crucifix and apse that frames it quite beautiful and spiritually uplifting, but not the living spirituality of the criminal Jesus whose message about wealth never informed the Rockefellers’ ruthless exploitation of others on their rise to power.

In years long past, when I first visited The Cloisters, being a native Bronx New Yorker, it was known simply as The Cloisters, even though The Met owned it since its inception in the 1930s.  Before I visited it as a young man, I had the impression it had some religious significance, as the name cloister suggests (early 13c., cloystre, “a monastery or convent, a place of religious retirement or seclusion”).

But I was wrong; it is a museum, a beautiful museum build with stones from European monasteries, churches, and convents transported long ago across the Atlantic and reconstructed on the heights above the Hudson River.  It is filled with medieval art collected by Rockefeller, George Gray Barnard, and other wealthy art collectors.  For those so disposed to wondering what royalty prayed for in medieval days – was it to slaughter as many Muslims as possible in the Crusades? – one can view the tiny prayer book once owned by the Queen of France – and imagine.  Such imagining might cause one to realize how little things have changed and how little things mean a lot.  The trick is to notice them.

Political power needs cultural power to operate effectively.  The elites can’t just slam people around and expect no response.  They need to worm their ideological messages into the public consciousness in pleasing ways.  Writing of Edmund Burke, Eagleton says, “Instead, he recognises that culture in the anthropological sense is the place where power has to bed itself down if it is to be effective. If the political doesn’t find a home in the cultural, its sovereignty won’t take hold.”

Thus, for an example from Hollywood and the pop-cultural realm, we might notice how many movies and TV shows were secretly co-written by the Pentagon.

Another name for this is propaganda

Cultural messaging is where the power elite need to seduce regular people that power is being exercised for their own good and everyone is in bed together.  Soft power.  Nice power.  Power that is disguised as beneficial for all.  Beautiful power.  “Spiritual” power.

As I said, Fort Tryon Park (designed by the Olmsted brothers, sons of the designer of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted) and The Cloisters are spectacularly beautiful.  Walking through the park on a sunny spring day to reach the museum on its northern end – the flowers and cherry blossom trees dazzling and the Hudson River glistening below – one is overwhelmed by the beauty and grateful to its human gift giver – John D. Rockefeller, Jr.  It takes a little mental stretching to grasp the paradox or the delusional dream of such thankfulness.  But it cuts to the heart of the power of the cultural complex and the ways it works to soften the ruthlessness of its ultra-rich capitalistic controllers.

First they rob you, then they gift you with a walk in the park.

And when you step inside their institutions, you are provided with opportunities to think within controlled parameters, while also getting a whiff of the theatrical nature of your experience.  The whiff is as important as the thinking, for it is a reminder to keep your mouth shut and you too will flourish.  The fraudulence of the cultural entertainment-educational complex can dawn on some who have been invited into the inner sanctums of power and prestige, as it has done presently for many college students (and some faculty) whose consciences do not allow them to sit still while Palestinians are slaughtered.  But if you dare to act upon your sense of being taken for a ride, watch out!   You will be banned from the pleasures that are offered for your acquiescence, as these students are now finding out.

They have rejected that part of the learning experience that George Orwell called Crimestop:

. . . [it] means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.  It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

Sometimes real thinking and conscience win the day, for the power of the elite’s cultural institutions is not omnipotent.  Everyone is not for sale, even those invited into the banquet.  Teach people to think and meditate on history and they just might think outside the cage of your expectations.

While the genocide of the Palestinians is transparent for everyone to see, the leaders of these elite universities, unlike the rebellious students, turn a blind eye to the obvious.  They follow the script they were handed when they accepted their prestigious positions of power, living up to Julian Benda’s famous appellation – The Treason of the Intellectuals.

But “beautiful” power becomes the iron fist when the plebes get too uppity and actually take seriously their studies and rebel as human beings with consciences.  This is the flip side to the hidden messages of the elite cultural institutions.

This two-sided process of hidden and obvious messages operates also in the media complex (see this).   While the so-called liberal and conservative media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Palestine, Israel, Russia and Ukraine, etc. that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media and from people they consider dissidents.  They are like little seeds slipped in as if no one will notice; they work their magic nearly unconsciously.  Few notice them, for they are often imperceptible.  But they have their effects and are cumulative and are far more powerful over time than blatant statements that will turn people off, especially those who think propaganda doesn’t work on them.  This is the power of successful propaganda, whether purposeful  or not.  It particularly works well on “intellectual” and highly-schooled people.

Some people think that if you see more than is apparent when visiting sites such as The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, you are incapable of enjoying the beauty of these “gifts.”  This is not true.  They are not mutually exclusive.  The great African-American scholar W. E. B. DuBois coined a term double-consciousness which I think can be used in this context to describe some people’s experience, not just that of African-Americans.  They see at least two truths simultaneously.  Their unreconciled double-consciousness prevents them from single vision when visiting the power elite’s beautiful creations.  William Blake’s words – “May God us keep from single vision and Newton’s sleep! – inform their perspective.

On the same trip to The Cloisters, my wife and I walked extensively through Central Park, surely one of the most beautiful parks in the world.  It was spectacularly aflame with Cherry Blossom trees and people from all over the world enjoying its pleasures, as did we. I, however, when entering and exiting this paradise, couldn’t help thinking that this park was caged in by the massive apartment complexes of the super-rich elite class, as if to say to the park’s visitors: you can visit but not stay.  We oversee your pleasures.

Max Weber said it well a century ago:

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might be said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

 


Legacy Media Sinking Ship Spawning New Networks

On 10 February, offGuardian’s Kit Knightly wrote a lucid analysis on What NO ONE is saying about Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview. Among many incisive points, consider the dynamic flip-flopping of the evil empire transmorgrified into its present-day re-branding as being worthy of note:

It’s 2024 & the world is being hurried fast toward the Brave New (“multipolar”) Normal. Russia is on board with Agenda 2030 & very powerful western establishment voices are now promoting Putin & his once-sidelined views.

Compare  Carlson’s Bread and Circuses theatrics with Oliver Stone’s 2017 interviews with Vladimir Putin (parts [1], [2], [3], & [4]). Stone’s films were met with blackout silence by plutocratic controlled and directed media. Seven years on, we are seeing the one percent agenda’s 180-degree reset of “what’s important”. 

On 25 December 2022 Edward Curtin wrote about Tucker Carlson and the JFK Allegations. Among other observations, he pointed out how people can be taken in by what they wish to hear:

If one asks a dedicated believer in the truthfulness of The New York Times Corporation or NPR, for example, what they think of Tucker Carlson, they will generally dismiss him with disdain as a right-wing charlatan.  This, of course, works in reverse if you ask Carlson’s followers what they think of the Times or NPR.  Yet for those who think outside the frame – and they are all non-mainstream – a different picture emerges.  But sometimes they are taken in by those whose equivocations are extremely lawyerly but appeal to what they wish to hear.  This is exactly what a “limited hangout” is.  Snagged by some actual truths, they bite on the bait of nuances that don’t mean what they think they do.

Left vs. right, Fox TV  vs. The New York Times, NPR, etc.: Just as Carlson’s father Dick Carlson ran the CIA-created U.S. overseas radio propaganda under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, so too the present head of National Public Radio, John Lansing, did the same under Barack Obama.  See my piece, Will NPR Now Change its Name to National Propaganda Radio.  Birds of a feather disguised as hawks and sparrows in a game meant to confuse and create scrambled brains.

Kit Knightly's focus on Carlson's "reborn" dazzling visibility pinpoints how the “approved alternative” messaging is more standard fare programming by fat cat interests and players. 

The fact is, legacy media is dying. Which is a good thing. But do you think the establishment doesn’t see this? Do you think it hadn’t occurred to them to get out in front of it by seizing control of the new media platforms and planting “leaders” in supposedly independent media movements?

As we keep having to remind our readers  lately the people and institutions that run the world are not wed to any single platform, method, nation or flag.

Or media.

They bought up all the newspapers because they were useful, they “syndicated” all the television networks because that’s what people were watching… so now as legacy media dies –  what do you think they’re gonna do?

Like a hermit crab swapping out shells – they will simply slide themselves from their old home to a nice shiny new  “indy” one.

Goodbye old fashioned corporate CNN, hello honestly completely organic guerilla news reporting livestreaming on X and getting totally accidentally promoted by the algorithm.

Goodbye long form editorials in newspapers, hello ten-second tiktoks from fake influencers in a government-run opinion factory.

Goodbye Tucker Carlson, paid disinfo promoter, hello Tucker Carlson voice of the new media who somehow still gets promoted by the very forces he’s supposed to be opposing....

The selling point of new-media was that everyone had access to it instantly, with that came realness marked by rawness.  The establishment quickly seized on these markers of authenticity & tried to make them  their own. Now that rawness is being manufactured and realness is being faked on a production line.

And by seeding the rising new-media with establishment voices allegedly “gone rogue” , the establishment takes control of it.

On top of that, the transition from old to new media can also be used to co-opt independent outlets and construct agenda-controlling fake binary narratives. With the old media selling one “side”, and new media the other.

That’s how you end up with crazy scenarios where billionaires like Elon Musk are cast as some kind of outsider, no matter how many Great Reset talking points he promotes, or podcasters like Joe Rogan apparently get $250 million from the system to attack the system, or the “intellectual dark web” shilling vaccines and Israel in equal measure.

The old establishment voices (Guardian, CNN, New York Times or whoever) noisily attack these new “anti-establishment” voices (who are always selling the same agenda in a slightly altered form), knowing that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mindset will give them cred  in genuine alternate media circles.

I mean it’s pretty cool to get a big old “ex”-mainstreamer on your side and agreeing to be on your podcast, right? Instant kudos, excitement. “See, even Big Name X admits we’re right about this”. It’s too easy to be seduced by the lure of  “celebrity rebel” narratives. We all want to believe them don’t we.

And thus, by putting “former” establishment insiders in leadership positions of “the alternative”, the ‘elite’ control the direction of their supposed opposition.

Tucker Carlson is the first really big voice to make the swap in a major way, but he won’t be the last. And his interview with Putin is yet another sign of the “approved alternative” messaging.

According to Twitter, the interview has been viewed 140 million times in 24 hours. Tucker and Putin have been trending ever since, promoted by the all powerful algorithm on a site owned by the richest man in the world, whilst simultaneously appearing on the front pages of every paper.

Wow, cool, right. The new media is just so right about this the establishment has no choice but to promote it!

Too easy to  fail to notice there’s nothing really “new” about this media at all. It’s just a very old hermit crab in a very new shell.


Antidote to the Hubris of Greed While Living Under Domination

Seeing the Maximum Security Establishment Denial System
David Ratcliffe, rat haus reality press, 23 Sep 2023
 

Fifty-four years ago, seeing, calling out, and mocking evil was front-and-center. In the 1970s, I’ll always remember a black-and-white magazine photo of a U.S. GI sitting in a jungle with the caption, “Why die for a piece of junk?” The double entendre of heroin and bankrupt U.S. policy was standard fare in journalism.

Since then, the steady erosion of a virile fourth estate, challenging the increasing reach of corporate state influence and power, has impoverished every facet of society.

Corporate Empire State: Greed Unbounded

In July, investigative reporter Paul Thacker[1] wrote about how “We must reform the law to force corporate documents into the public - Companies continue to hide evidence of product dangers by sealing off records behind corrupt court protective orders.” He was to attend a Toronto conference as part of an international group of academics and journalists focusing on ghostwriting in science and medicine. Enroute from Madrid, he found himself stuck in the Newark airport because of hundreds of flight cancellations. He ended up remotely giving his talk in a quiet corner: “Records entered into public courts belong to the public[2]

Thacker’s paper includes details of how, “Since a 1984 Supreme Court decision on rules of discovery, the courts have become more secretive and willing to keep documents hidden under seal, even if those documents show a product is dangerous.” Discovery is the process when each side in a lawsuit gets to see the other side’s documents, depositions, etc., “to explore if their legal opponent is being honest.” During discovery all such evidence is held in secret.

Citing the UCSF Documents Archive which contains litigation records from tobacco, chemicals, drugs, food, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, and opioids, Thacker points out, “These documents are critical to exposing harms caused by corporate products and the strategies companies use to fool people. Litigation is critical to uncovering evidence of dangerous products, but discovery documents are seldom made public, and are often sealed as part of settlements.”

Thacker summarizes a number of significant court cases where sealed documents caused unconscionable injury and death, including the recent, criminally intentional harm referred to as the opioid crisis.[3] He concludes his analysis urging promulgation of sunshine rules and laws in all states:

Texas and Florida have “sunshine” rules and laws that limit the sealing of health and safety records, but corporate lobbying has stymied federal sunshine legislation for decades. While pursuing a federal law to limit court secrecy, reformers should consider advancing similar state laws to ensure court documents, once entered into public courts, remain public.

Corporate historian Richard Grossman (1943-2011) was an extremely articulate, insightful, visionary and teacher, who as my wife has observed, was gifted in the art of listening.[4] He was steadfast and uncompromising in his challenging the disastrous rise of U.S. corporate governance.

You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can’t get there obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can’t get there kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn’t disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth.

Grossman’s analysis spans the timeline from creation of the original slavemaster constitution, through its initial replacement with the post-civil war nascent corporate constitution, into the 20th century and beyond. An excerpt from American Tragedy: The Codification and Institutionalization of Violence[5] on the “Clean Air Act” provides an example of his resolute perspective:

Bush Senior puppeteers staging their heroic drama propped up every scene with the USA’s “cult of divinities.” They, too, drew upon folk memory and folk history—but memory and history fabricated by generations of slavemaster and corporate manager operatives. How easy it was for them to act out a play called “Clean Air” while condemning yet another generation to breathing poisons! By then, it was a tradition. The nation’s poisoners and intimidators had long been engaged in play-acting—see how they camouflaged the rule of law which guaranteed the flooding of the South under toxic chemicals and usurpers.

Of course, very important people throughout our society had to pretend not to see as government and corporate gods drenched the South in poisons and denials of rights, as they drove their Dirty Air laws into the books. These men and women appeared to suffer not as they devoured their reviews, back-slapped at cast parties, accumulated honors, and lived the good life.

Today in Washington DC there is a new generation of tragedy choreographers. The actors’ masks may be different, but the violence is the same. And the corporate press, dressed for critical analysis, continues to fabricate swill.

Revealing the Violence of Present Day Tragedy Choreographers

The above was written in 2004. Coming up on two decades hence, the violence of present day tragedy choreographers is beyond comprehension for too many souls. This is primarily due to the heretofore unthinkable censorship by the U.S. federal government, led by the executive branch, directing big tech to delete all information, analysis, and debate not conforming to official increasingly-injurious-and-lethal dogma.[6]

 

READ COMPLETE ESSAY


Four Died Trying: A Powerful, Riveting, and Masterful Documentary Series Begins

FOUR DIED TRYING
Prologue

by Edward J. Curtin, Jr., 13 Dec 2023, edwardcurtin.com

It is hard for those who have not lived through the shattering political assassinations of the 1960s to grasp their significance for today.  Many might assume that that was then and long before their time, so let’s move on to what we must deal with today.  Let some old folks, the obsessive ones, live in the past.  It is an understandable but mistaken attitude that this documentary will quickly shatter, visually and audibly.  The echoes of those guns that killed President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in rapid succession repeat and repeat and repeat down through the years, and their echoes bang off the walls of all today’s news that springs from the cells of all the little digital dinguses that provide a constant stream of distractions and fear porn meant to titillate but not illuminate the connections between then and now, nor those between the four subjects of this illuminating film.

Today we are living the consequences of the CIA/national security state’s 1960s takeover of the country.  Their message then and now: We, the national security state, rule, we have the guns, the media, and the power to dominate you.  We control the stories you are meant to hear.  If you get uppity, well-known, and dare challenge us, we will buy you off, denigrate you, or, if neither works, we will kill you.  You are helpless, they reiterate endlessly.  Bang. Bang. Bang.

But they lie, and this series, beginning with its first installment (see sneak peek here), will tell you why.  It will show why understanding the past is essential for transforming the present.  It will profoundly inspire you to see and hear these four bold and courageous men refuse to back down to the evil forces that shot them down.  It will open your eyes to the parallel spiritual paths they walked and the similarity of the messages they talked about - peace, justice, racism, human rights, and the need for economic equality - not just in the U.S.A. but across the world, for the fate of all people was then, and is now, linked to the need to transform the U.S. warfare state into a country of peace and human reconciliation, just as these four men radically underwent deep transformations in the last year of their brief lives.

Four Died Trying, directed by John Kirby, the wonderful filmmaker who made The American Ruling Class with and about Lewis Lapham, and produced by Libby Handros, his partner in exposing the criminals that run the country, has just begun streaming.

As I watched the first twenty minutes of this opening episode, I was inwardly screaming, feeling deep in my soul how powerfully the film was capturing the essence of the dynamic, prophetic, and charismatic voices of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Jr., and RFK.  All shot down – we hear the gun shots – by deep state forces, even as the film artfully juxtaposes this brutality against video clips of new reports, images of advertisements for silly products, and television shows that kept most of the public entertained and distracted during the 1960s carnage.  Doing the Hokey Pokey, as the soundtrack plays it, but not turning around in a profound sense, as did the four who died trying to radically change the country and the world for the better.  Simply as film art, this documentary is ingenious.  And its use of music is great.

I was transported back to the time of my youth.  I was startled again by the powerful courage, passion, and eloquent intelligence of those four compelling voices that once lifted my spirits to the heavens, and I felt the despair as well as each assassination followed the other and my spirits sank.  It is not nostalgic, I am sure, to say that one is hard pressed to find those qualities in many leaders today.  Like others of my generation, I am still trying to grasp the depths of what their assassinations did to me.  Bob Dylan, who came to prominence in the midst of it all, referring ironically to his own life and work, has said that his first girlfriend was named Echo.  I think I know her, for she echoed down the canyons of my mind as I watched this prologue and continues as I now reflect upon it.

So it does get hard to be objective, if that is what you want.  I don’t.  This not-to-be-missed film is truthful, for it uses vintage footage of what these men said and what was said against them by a government/media intent of distorting their messages and their assassinations.  Listen and then research if you have any doubts.  See if the film is truthful or manipulative,  As one who has deeply studied these matters, I can attest to the former.

And I can tell you that if you are young and never knew about these four guys and what men they were - not in any macho sense, but as true lovers of human beings, men with chests, as C.S. Lewis described those who were true and brave and undaunted by the then current vibes that sucked the soul out of you, not pseudo-men in the “pumping iron” sense, not men who tried to appeal to your grossest stereotypes - you are in for a great surprise.  You will yearn to see them resurrected in others today.  In yourselves.  As Malcolm X said hopefully, “The dead are arising.”

This 58 minute prologue touches on many of themes that will follow in the months ahead.   Season One will be divided into chapters that cover the four assassinations together with background material covering “the world as it was” in the 1950s with its Cold War propaganda, McCarthyism, the rise of the military-industrial complex, the CIA, red-baiting, and the ever present fear of nuclear war.  Season Two will be devoted to the government and media coverups, citizen investigations, and the intelligence agencies’ and their media mouthpieces’ mind control operations aimed at the American people that continue today.

One important aspect of this documentary series – never before done in film – is the way it shows the linkages between these four great leaders.  Beside their own words, we hear from their families and associates throughout.  Based on over 120 interviews conducted over many years, we hear from the four men’s children, Vince Salandria, James W. Douglass, Mort Sahl, Harry Belafonte, Khaleed Sayyed,  Earl Caldwell, Clarence Jones, James Galbraith, John Hunt, Stephen Schlesinger, Andrew Young, Oliver Stone, David Talbot, Adam Walinsky, et al.  It is an amazing list of thoughtful commentators who tell the story for the dead men whose living tongues have been silenced, although we are privileged for their fatidic cinematic ghosts to speak to us through archival footage.

In this opening Prologue, I was especially impressed with the words of Vince Salandria, one of the earliest critics of the Warren Commission’s absurd claims, and Adam Walinsky, a former aide and speechwriter for RFK, who made it clear that we are free, no matter what the propagandists tell us.  That freedom to think and act, to make connections between then and now, to see the linkages between the four men’s messages and today, is crucial to carry on their legacy.  That message ends the Prologue.  It is a message of hope in a dark time.

This opening prologue is divided into four parts, each devoted to what each man tried to accomplish.  That is followed by a section on how they died and the ways it was buried, ending with an Epilogue on why they died and why it matters today.

All four died fighting the international power structure, the CIA and FBI, the military-industrial complex, the racist ideology central to the capitalist elites’ economic injustice and warfare state – those deep structures of power that have come to be called the deep state.  They were brothers in arms, their only weapons being their linked arms in a spiritual war against evil forces.  They were men of compassionate conscience, warriors for peace and justice for all.  That is why they were killed.

Four Died Trying is a profound documentary.  It is good that each episode will be a stand-alone short film - that gives the viewer time to absorb its lessons rather than binging on too much too soon.  Once you watch this prologue, with its overview of all to come, you will be hooked.  It is not just revelatory history, but is artistically made, and, dare I say, entertaining.  Kirby and Handros are astute to realize that young people demand more than lectures, and it is to the next generations that these voices must be addressed.  For although the times have changed, in so many ways we are today faced with all the same problems.  The deep wounds of the 1960s were never given careful treatment; they are now suppurating and the infection is spreading.

Then and now.  There is a powerful clip in the film of Senator Robert Kennedy giving a speech in Chicago when he has decided to enter the race for the presidency right after the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, a massive breakout surprise to U.S. authorities who thought they could contain and defeat the Vietnamese struggle for independence; that they had them trapped.  Kennedy has decided to enter the race for President and realizes that supporting a corrupt South Vietnamese government and their ruthless policies aimed at exterminating the Vietcong and North Vietnamese is morally wrong and runs counter to American attestations of the belief in democracy and justice for all.  He says about such an impossible military victory:

. . . and that the effort to win such a victory will only result in the further slaughter of thousands of innocent and helpless people—a slaughter which will forever rest on all our consciences and the national conscience of the country.

His was a powerful moral voice.  Who is standing with the innocent and helpless people today?  And who is standing with the killers?  As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”  And procrastination is still the thief of time and conscience whispers those pathetic words: Too Late.

Don’t miss Four Died Trying.  I am sure it will affect you deeply and force you to think twice over about what is going on today.

Yes, then and now.  To slightly alter the song, As Time Goes By:

It's still the same old story.
A fight for love and glory.
A case of do and die.
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.

 

 

 

 


A Message to Donald Rumsfeld’s Ghost About My Known Knowns

by Edward J. Curtin, Jr., 9 Oct 2023, edwardcurtin.com

“[I]it has been very obvious for a very long time that the evidence for United States’ crimes of all sorts has been available to anyone who wished to face the truth. It does not take great expertise, just an eye for the obvious and the willingness to do a little homework.... Donald Rumsfeld, as a key long time insider to U.S. deep state operations, was surely aware of my list of known knowns. He was just one of many such slick talkers involved in demonic U.S. operations that have always been justified, denied, or kept secret by him and his ilk. One does not have to be a criminologist to realize these things.... Despite double-talkers like [Rumsfeld], evidence of decades of U.S. propaganda is easy to see through if one is compelled by the will-to-truth.”

Read COMPLETE WORK.

Consider how, it makes not the slightest difference whether Obama, Trump or covid occupy the Oval Office. Things only move in one direction.


Intro to the Jonestown Massacre Conspiracies of 1978

Intro to the Jonestown Massacre Conspiracies of 1978
Interview with Author Joseph Green
18 Sep 2023

The following two interviews leverage Joseph Green’s
CIA Makes Science Fiction Unexciting #9: Intro to the Jonestown Massacre Conspiracies 1978
Publisher: ‎ Microcosm Publishing
Published: ‎ August 20, 2018
ISBN-10 ‏: ‎ 1621060136
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1621060130
“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!” Most people have heard the phrase, but like so many famous phrases, its origin is a lie. Did Jim Jones lead a cult which killed themselves at his command, or was that story concocted to cover up something more sinister? One fact to consider is that the local coroner reported that the people of Jonestown were murdered, although this was ignored by the American press for unknown reasons. Another fact is that the guy who bought the land for Jonestown was a CIA operative. Also, Jim’s best friend from childhood was a CIA torturer. And the “cult” consisted largely of kidnapped slave labor—mostly Black women. And yet this still barely scratches the surface of a conspiracy that provides a roadmap of how special operations are executed.

See Also:
JOEGREENJFK.com
Foundational research by John Judge:
The Black Hole of Guyana - The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre 1985
The Jonestown Banks 1982

 

 


Another Magical JFK Assassination Pseudo-Debate and Limited Hangout

Worthy Of Note:
Best Sellers in Communication & Media Studies
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters Paperback – October 19, 2010
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/13022421/ref=sr_bs_0_13022421_1
Evidence, buttressed by the following analysis, that corporate empire state dogma is losing significant ground in the entrenched psyop-war for hearts and minds.

by Edward J. Curtin, Jr., 14 September 2023, edwardcurtin.com

Much has been made of the September 9, 2023 simultaneous reports in The New York Times and Vanity Fair of the claims of a former Secret Service agent, Paul Landis, who was part of the security detail in Dallas, Texas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.  Like so many reports by such media that have covered up the truth of the assassination for sixty years, this one about “the magic bullet” is also a red herring.

It encourages pseudo-debates and confusion and is a rather dumb “limited hangout,” which is a strategy used by intelligence agencies to dangle some truth in order to divert attention from core facts of a case they are desperate to conceal. With these particular articles, they are willing to suggest that maybe the Warren Commission’s magic bullet claim is possibly incorrect. This is because so many people have long come to realize that that part of the propaganda story is absurd, so the coverup artists are willing to suggest it might be wrong in order to continue debating meaningless matters based on false premises in order to solidify their core lies.

Despite responses to these two stories about Landis that credit them for “finally” showing that the “magic bullet” claim of the Warren Commission is now dead, it would be more accurate to say they have revived debate about it in order to sneakily hide the fundamental fact about the assassination: that the CIA assassinated JFK.

We can expect many more such red herrings in the next two months leading up to the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination.

They are what one of the earliest critics of The Warren Commission, Vincent Salandria, a brilliant Philadelphia lawyer, called “a false mystery.”  He said:

After more than a half century, the historical truth of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been finally established beyond rational dispute. The Kennedy assassination is a false mystery. It was conceived by the conspirators to be a false mystery which was designed to cause interminable debate. The purpose of the protracted debate was to obscure what was quite clearly and plainly a coup d’état. Simply stated, President Kennedy was assassinated by our U.S. national security state in order to abort his efforts to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.

That the corporate mainstream should trumpet these reports as important is to be expected, but that they are also so greeted by some people who should know better is sad.  For there is no mystery about the assassination of President Kennedy; he was assassinated by the CIA and the evidence for this fact has long been available. And the Warren Commission’s claim that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the so-called “magic bullet” – Commission Exhibit 299 – that entered JFK’s back and exited his neck and then went into the back of Gov. John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat, zigzagging in multiple directions, causing him five wounds and then emerging in pristine condition, has always been risible.  Only fools or those ignorant of the details have ever believed it, but desperate conspirators led by the late Arlen Specter, the future Senator, did desperate things for The Warren Commission in order to pin the rap on the patsy Oswald and cover-up for the killers.

I could spend many words explaining the details of the government conspiracy to assassinate JFK, why they did it, and have been covering it up ever since.  But I have done this elsewhere.  If you wish to learn the truth from credible sources, I would highly recommend that you watch the long version of Oliver Stone’s documentary JFK Revisited; Through the Looking Glass and then closely read the transcripts and interviews in James DiEugenio’s crucial compendium of transcripts and interviews for the film.  You will immediately realize that these recent revelations are a continuation of the coverup.

This should be immediately intuited by the titles of the two pieces.  The New York Times’ article, written by its chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, who previously worked for the Washington Post for twenty years, including four years as its Moscow bureau chief, is entitled JFK Assassination Witness Breaks His Silence and Raises New Questions. (The Times and Washington Post have long been the CIA’s mouthpieces.) The Vanity Fair article is written by James Robenalt, a colleague of John Dean of Watergate infamy, and is entitled A New JFK  Assassination Revelation Could Upend the Long-Held “Lone Gunman” Theory.

For anyone with a soupçon of linguistic analytical skill and a rudimentary knowledge of the JFK assassination, those titles immediately induce skepticism.  “New questions”?  Don’t we already have the answers we need.  “Could Upend the Long-Held ‘Lone Gunman’ Theory”?  So we must keep debating and researching the obvious.  Why?  To protect the CIA.

Both articles go on to expound on how the sympathetically described poor conscience-stricken old guy Landis’s claim that he found the so-called pristine magic bullet on the top back of the car seat where JFK was sitting and placed it on Kennedy’s stretcher in Parkland Hospital without telling anyone for all these decades is an earth shattering revelation.  And as they do so, they make sure to slip in a series of falsehoods to reinforce the essence of the government’s case.

If anyone is interested in the facts concerning the physical evidence, all one need do is read Vincent Salandria’s analysis here.  Once you have, you will realize the hullabaloo about Landis is a pseudo-debate.

These articles about Landis reinforce what Dr. Martin Schotz describes in his book History Will Not Absolve Us, and what he said in a talk twenty-five years ago.  He made a distinction between the waters of knowledge and the waters of uncertainty.  In the case of the JFK assassination, the public is allowed to think anything they want, but they are not allowed to know the truth, although since the Warren Commission was released it was evident that “no honest person could ever accept the single bullet theory.”  And he then added this about pseudo- debates :

The lie that was destined to cover the truth of the assassination was the lie that the assassination is a mystery, that we are not sure what happened, but being free citizens of a great democracy we can discuss and debate what has occurred. We can petition our government and join with it in seeking the solution to this mystery. This is the essence of the cover-up.

The lie is that there is a mystery to debate. And so we have pseudo-debates. Debates about meaningless disputes, based on assumptions which are obviously false. This is the form that Orwell’s crimestop has taken in the matter of the President’s murder. I am talking about the pseudo-debate over whether the Warren Report is true when it is obviously and undebatably false. . . . Perhaps many people think that engaging in pseudo-debate is a benign activity. That it simply means that people are debating something that is irrelevant. This is not the case. I say this because every debate rests on a premise to which the debaters must agree, or there is no debate. In the case of pseudo-debate the premise is a lie. So in the pseudo-debate we have the parties to the debate agreeing to purvey a lie to the public. And it is all the more malignant because it is subtle. The unsuspecting person who is witness to the pseudo-debate does not understand that he is being passed a lie. He is not even aware that he is being passed a premise. It is so subtle that the premise just passes into the person as if it were reality. This premise—that there is uncertainty to be resolved—seems so benign. It is as easy as drinking a glass of treated water.

But the fact remains that there is no mystery except in the minds of those who are willing to drink this premise. The premise is a lie, and a society which agrees to drink such a lie ceases to perceive reality. This is what we mean by mass denial.

That the entire establishment has been willing to join in this process of cover-up by confusion creates an extreme form of problem for anyone who would seek to utter the truth. For these civilian institutions—the media, the universities and the government—once they begin engaging in denial of knowledge of the identity of the assassins, once they are drawn into the cover-up, a secondary motivation develops for them. Now they are not only protecting the state, they are now protecting themselves, because to expose the obviousness of the assassination and the false debate would be to reveal the corrupt role of all these institutions. And there is no question that these institutions are masters in self-protection. Thus anyone who would attempt to confront the true cover-up must be prepared to confront virtually the entire society. And in doing this, one is inevitably going to be marginalized.

And to mention just one false premise of the Landis saga (beside the one that there is uncertainty to be resolved; and there are many others, but one will suffice, since I don’t want to enter into a pseudo-debate), it is that the so-called magic bullet in evidence – CE 399 – the one discussed in these articles, is not even the one said to be found somewhere in Parkland Hospital, and the chain of custody for that bullet – or some bullet – is broken in many places (see James DiEugenio, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass ).

Phantom bullets and plenty of magic go into the creation and destruction of this tall tale told to camouflage the CIA’s guilt in its killing of President Kennedy.  If you believe in magic and mystery, The New York Times’ Peter Baker has these words for you, if you can understand them:

Mr. Landis’s account, included in a forthcoming memoir, would rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way. It may not mean any more than that. But it could also encourage those who have long suspected that there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, adding new grist to one of the nation’s enduring mysteries.

Yes, those four English lads said it in 1967: “The magical mystery tour is hoping to take you away” into an enduring mystery, even though the case was solved long ago.